I am not sure you should prepare for a specific events. Where I live -- in the desert Southwest -- the weather here is mild in the winter and other weather hazards are essentially non-existent. Earthquake risk is low and flooding where I live is highly unlikely.

Surviving in the extreme heat of summer without tap water for a few days was the most threatening disaster I felt I might face (after the rarely discussed house fire). Then a record cold snap came in February and changed my perspective. Every power generating plant in the city was knocked out from the extreme cold. All of the electricity for a city of 600,000 was being provided by the local utility's fractional ownership of a nuclear power plant hundreds of miles away. The utility had to start rationing electricity with rolling blackouts.

This caused pipes to freeze and break in many houses that had been without power for only a few hours. The electric utility also inadvertently cut power to some water utility facilities and the city's water supply was compromised. If your house still had water, we were under a boil-order for 3+ days.

I assure you that nobody in this city had prepared for losing their electricity and water due to extreme cold.

Another local example is that earlier this month, the utility's supply lines from the same nuclear power plant were threatened by forest fires -- something that hadn't occurred to the utility's emergency planners since there are not any forests around here.

So to me, preparing for certain types of events is helpful to the extent it helps with general preparedness, but many natural events become disasters because something nobody has ever considered possible happens.